Baptist Press spells out the fears of the faithful in an interview with Alliance Defense Fund attorney Austin R. Nimocks who says the religious protection written in the N.Y. law is inadequate:

It does not protect individuals. It does not protect private business owners. It does not protect, for example, a bed and breakfast owner who is using their own private personal property in the type of intimate setting that a bed and breakfast is. It does not protect licensed professionals. For example, it does not protect counselors. It also does not protect lawyers -- you may have a family law attorney who does not want to do a same-sex divorce because of their deeply held religious beliefs. It does not protect fertility doctors who may have a strict belief and only want to help [heterosexual] married couples because they believe a kid deserves both a mom and a dad.

This is echoed in Get Religion media critic Mollie Hemingway's focus on concerns of traditionalist faithful (with no mention of commentary on religious groups that support gay marriage or media coverage of those views). Hemingway wonders: .

Will same-sex marriage laws impact the rights of religious organizations to place children for adoption as they see fit? What about Lutheran parochial schools that have faced civil rights lawsuits over their honor code? Will Muslim doctors have the right to refuse to do in vitro fertilization treatment on a woman in a lesbian marriage? Will an evangelical referring a patient to someone without religious qualms over same-sex marriage lose her job or license? What about the civil servants who have religious objections to same-sex marriage? Apart from wedding vendors, there are all sorts of other lines of work where individual religious liberty and religiously-motivated objections to same-sex marriage where the questions persist. What about adoption services, for instance? How might public school curriculum change? Will that pose a challenge for any public school teachers who are Muslim, Jewish or Christian?

The Concord Monitor in Massachusetts looked at this in 2009, before gay marriage passed in Massachusetts, in a story on wedding photographers. They expected no problem. One called the fear of being forced to serve gay clients "a red herring."

The Boston Globe, looking at the battle in New York last week as the religious exemption was hashed out, talked to New Yorkers in the wedding and marriage services industry and found some nervous people:

Bill Banuchi, who provides Christian marriage and family counseling and seminars through his Marriage and Family Savers Institute in Newburgh, N.Y., said he wouldn't be protected by any religious exemptions because his business is considered a tax-exempt, not-for-profit educational charity, not a religious institution.

"We have certain principles and ethical guidelines we'd have to compromise," Banuchi said Wednesday. "We would be in violation of the law and open to being sued for discrimination, and we could lose our tax-exempt status if we refused to counsel couples according to their value system. Our value system is that the only authentic marriage is between a male and a female."

But the Globe hit a point that seems to have been lost in all of this discussion. Discrimination based on sexual orientation is already against the law in New York., says Susan Sommer, director of constitutional litigation for Lambda Legal, a New York-based gay rights organization.

While Hemingway, Baptist Press, Alliance Defense and others point to key cases (not in gay marriage states) where a religious person or group was prosecuted for discrimination in dealing with gays or lesbians, Sommer dismisses these saying:

What's going on here is an effort to make a mountain out of a mole hill. There has been a notable absence of conflict anywhere in the country pitting marriage rights or civil union rights against religious objections.

With six states and D.C. approving gay marriage and 31 banning it, the Associated Press looks at prospects for gay marriage in the remaining states, starting with a fight revving up in Minnesota.

Gay-marriage supporters in the Land of 10,000 Lakes will be working fervently to end a 31-state losing streak at the polls and defeat a proposed amendment on the 2012 ballot that would limit marriage to one-man, one-woman unions.

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About Cathy Lynn Grossman

Cathy Lynn Grossman is too fidgety to meditate. But talking about visions and values, faith and ethics lights her up. Join in at Faith & Reason. More about Cathy.